Gone.

I'm leaving school for good today, with a boyfriend, a graduation ceremony to still get through, and no more time to explain further.

My horoscope.

It has surprisingly practical advice sometimes.

Before this day is over, you might grow very accustomed to the flavor of your shoes. Sticking your foot in your mouth isn't going to be your new trademark, but it could be something you struggle with today. You may tend to say things before you think, which is bad. Luckily, it's also a problem that is easy to solve. Think things through and don't be afraid of silence. Not saying anything at all is a lot better than taking a risk and coming up short.

Go on, take everything.

I thought he was more certain about us staying together than I am. He's not. That's unsettling. I was depending on his certainty to convince me.



Shit.
I don't want him to come to graduation dinner but I don't know how to un-invite him.
But we want the exact same thing. We want the exact same thing from each other. That's what's important. We'll just have to be patient and decide.
We want exactly the same thing. Okay. I--we can do this.

Did that really just happen?

...Did Mr. Librarian really just go down on me in the dark, locked common room?

In this chair. That's my ass print 6 hours later.

At 3am. This morning. He did. Because he wanted to. And I wanted him to. And it felt damn good. A little unsettling. (For how many other people has this been a ritual, accidentally or otherwise? This isn't us going too fast, is it? Oh, fuck it--)
But wait a minute, wait a minute.
The Talks I Will Have to Have with Mr. Librarian, Probably Tonight If We See Each Other as Planned but Definitely Before Next Friday When I Peace Out of Here:

• What does it mean that I'm leaving the city and probably won't live here again for an indefinite period of time? I think I like him enough to keep this going, at least to see how it feels in my post-college reality. I think he feels the same way. But we need to make sure.
• What's he invited to on graduation day? Does he go to the ceremony and spend an hour and a solid half getting to know my parents by himself while I chill (freak) out in my seat 5,000 feet away with the rest of the mortarboards? Does he go to the ceremony and sit by himself and make everyone feel vaguely uneasy about that? Does he go to the ceremony and holy fuck please no sit with Mike? Or does he just meet me and my parents up for dinner after? None of the above; well, some of the above stitched together. He'll have work. It's 3pm on a Friday. HE'LL HAVE WORK OH THANK GOD YEAH JUST MEET US TO EAT US. (...Heh. I shouldn't put it that way on the invitations.) 
• He called me his girlfriend about five times last night, just casually tossed off. Three times in public (the Tavern at a local band show we went to hear) and twice during our Choose Your Own Adventure time. I don't care about what we call each other except when the label implies rules. Like girlfriend. And boyfriend. Those mean things.

But you know what's even more intimate? We read each others' writings and liked them. 

"Hey, let's go dance and make the other people uncomfortable."
YES.

Homie, this shit is basic.

Mike called me today.

It was after I woke up at 9am and decided to go ahead and walk to the Food Lion to buy ingredients for a red velvet cake I wanted to make for the senior semester official non-homemade-jello-shots celebration at our editing professor's house and then decided oh what the hell I won't have time in the next 36 hours so I'll go ahead and bake this sonovabitch.

It's not pretty but it gets the point across.

I was walking outside in a flour-covered t-shirt that I hadn't bothered to change because I was going for a run in about two seconds. I hadn't showered and I smelled like vanilla and frosting and had red dye smeared like blood down a forearm. Mike's car glided by and we caught eyes and waved.
That upset me. That made me remember all over again. So I went running.
After, when I was walking back upstairs in my dorm, he called. He said seeing me on campus made him realize we hadn't spoken in two weeks. (Two weeks? That time span sounds odd. But it's true.)
Yeah, I mean...I thought we were sort of going with that. The no-contact thing. As the least painful, least tempting, Jesus-will-approve-and-so-will-our-sanity option.
Now he's coming to my graduation.
That's not as intimate as it sounds; it's a spring ceremony for a public state college and is free and open to the public. A good many people come to hear the speaker and not cheer on some yahoo or another getting a degree.(Hi, Mom!)
But he's coming to see me.
I'm going to meet up with him afterward if that's possible in the chaos. I should somehow explain this to my parents, myself, and Mr. Librarian before it actually happens.
We can haz friendship back now plz?
Oh dear. I'm getting flippant again.

Literature and Star Wars

Star Wars marathon (original trilogy non-special edition, duh) + a mushroom pizza + co-copy editing an English paper for Ed over email + discovering we had articles in the same issue of the student paper in August 2007 = best date so far?
I'm very tempted to say yes.

Old picture but nicely illustrates the nerdy.

His mom watched most of the first movie with us. I'm not going to say that was annoying because guess who shouldn't cast stones from her own parents' house since she's moving back there in a week and some days? Yeah.
But we bonded over what unassigned things we've found in our past English anthology textbooks and Han Solo's bassassery vs. Luke's nobility and I don't know how else I feel about this except  "good." Kind of a generic description, but...good. It fits.

99 problems but this pitch ain't one.

Tomorrow's my last ever day of school ever. It promises to be a calm one in the newsroom.

I'm just glad I passed. That "D" is not my grade (although it's probably damn close); it's my reporting/editing professor's initial. He scribbled this on a blank sheet of tabloid paper and propped it up on my chair when I went down to the broadcast semester's studio. 

This is going up next to the diploma.

One of us does that each week, you know, look in the camera and read the scrolling words we wrote and try to stand up straight while you tell people watching (nobody except us) what's online and in the next issue in 45 seconds at the end of their daily live news show. 

Take an extra second to slow down, get it right, write it out, let your edits breathe. Find the rhythm of your story. Watch the visual grammar of your story structure; that matters too.
Remember that there are many other people and many other things in the world other than the boys you get preoccupied with. With whom you get preoccupied, sorry. Always protect the grammar. It needs your help.
I want to remember all of that.

We the students are having a keg party at one of our apartments (not it) tomorrow night to celebrate our triumph. I'm just glad I passed. I've never been to a keg party, but I like all the other people who are going and hell, don't have to wake up any sort of early on Tuesday.

No produndities, dear reader. Just an ending. I'm ready to get out of here.

Comfy broad.

This is my DNA bracelet. I'd like to present it as a symbol of how things are going with Mr. Librarian: bright, shiny, a little clingy, but it stretches to fit.

Biggest overreaction to a gift: him when I gave him the Gatorade I bought with my meal plan for him while he's recovering from nasal surgery this weekend. He hugged me like five times and then sent me a pun-riddled thank you text the next day at his lunchtime.
Weirdest parallel found so far between him and BF: the floorplans of their childhood houses. They're the same, because BF grew up in the same neighborhood. I didn't get dejavu until I went upstairs with Mr. Librarian and then BAM. I think there's even the same Bless This Home shell-colored framed needlepoint in the SAME CORNER.
Oddest turn-on discovered while snuggling and making out and groping fully clothed on his bed: A tie between whispering in his ear (he got this voracious look on his face and jumped me) and kneeing him in the groin (no, seriously. He told me to try it, so I did. Very gingerly. His face got this melty look that...well, frankly it made me want to jump him in turn.)
 Favorite poem from the poetry reading he invited me to last night: "Truck Driver Jesus."
Geekiest bonding moment: Sharing indignation at our governor's latest screw up. OR noticing how he leads with his chin when he nods and unconsciously doing the same thing while listening to his mom. OR discussing censorship in young adult books and whether that's a necessary thing or not (it's not. They've got to learn about the world somehow. Books're probably the safest way to do that). OR deciding we need more of each others' music snobbery in our lives.
Most alarming use of a word meaning commitment: when he talked about this aunt and uncle of his who always make him feel like a geek. "If they were coming over tonight, I could go, 'Look at my girlfriend! Who's a geek now?' " I let it pass because he was joking, mostly, I think, and he didn't bring it up again.
I'm kind of gun shy about that word right this second.  
But: Best part about last night: realizing we both like each other a lot. I know, BIG SURPRISE ENDING.

Chocolate wine and Twizzlers.

Sudden craving for chocolate wine and Twizzlers means my period's here. Body, you're weird.
Yeah. And heart? Please stop doing this to me. Pick one damn speed and wear that one out before moving on. It's confusing and makes me feel guilty for being happy AND sad at the same time.



AND YOU'RE MAKING ME LIKE COUNTRY MUSIC. STOP THAT.

Drinking alone.

It doesn't really work. It just makes me too dizzy and flushed and sleepy to do much of anything.

I would like to share this bottle of chocolate raspberry wine I bought at Food Lion. I would like to sit on a front porch with a boy and pretend we can't taste the medicinal bite of alcohol under the chocolate aftertaste as we watch Friday night cars glide through the navy velvet night punctuated by orange streetlamps and feel a cool storm-bringing breeze stir our skin and hair until we're too cold and we go inside and lie next to each other on a bed until we slip into sleep.

Maybe if the Librarian's sinus surgery isn't next weekend and maybe if my roommate goes home next weekend, that could actually happen.

He road tripped to Pennsylvania this weekend--something planned months ago--and has sent me a couple sort of postcards in text message form.

April 14, 8:47pm: Started Steven Seagal's Out For Justice with VA pals, wish you were here to hate/love this with us. :)

No way in hell was I ever going with him (he did ask, in a half-assed "You're probably going to say no" sort of toss-off remark), but that does sound kind of fun.
He got into Philly, telling me that and the following as I wandered grocery store aisles, done with my shopping but still enjoying that narcotic soothing rhythm of strolling through shelves of neatly packed things:

April 15, 5:50pm: Name-dropped "Melanie" a few times related to cool things, always with reference to "Melanie likes that too!"
Including to a waitress who tried to talk me OUT of ordering pasta that had mushrooms on it (it was delicious, thankyouverymuch).

 Um. I guess I would be more creeped out if I hadn't name-dropped him in a  phone conversation with my mother about him an hour later. But she needs to know. Maybe. Probably. More than his friends in Virginia need to know, anyway. At least out of sheer proximity. 
My parents have been surprisingly nonchalant about this whole me dating thing, considering how little practice we've all had dealing with it and how very much of an only child I am. 

Abraham Lincoln quality, that.

I saw Mike today, as I walked back to my dorm from the j-school and he walked over to his car from the computer science building. We waved.
That's it. Waved without pausing, either of us, an entire street width apart with no goofy runs toward each other in anticipation. I don't even know if we smiled.
*headdesk that turns into a minor sob*

Tonight was my dorm's end-of-the-year banquet. I bit the bullet (the over-salted black olives) and actually went to the goddamn thing.

It was anticlimactic, as was my last radio station meeting ever. My sentiment's run dry. That's probably a good thing, or at least protective.
I keep trying to remember HEY NOW THIS IS THE LAST ONE as college things start to fall like dominoes, but I just can't find enough poetic nostalgia lying around to care.

You're nice to boys.

Michael, just know that I mourn in strange ways, okay? I'm pretty sure you won't let me bake you a cake.

A day after I made out with Mr. Librarian in the campus library stairwell in between looking for a cardboard life-sized model of a raptor, he called my radio show and requested this song.



This is cute. And fast. Maybe too fast. But we have so much in common he even went to high school with BF.
Mr. Librarian brought it up, as in, "If you were at the radio station then, you must know BF, this kid I went to high school with..."
I would've been completely happy never knowing that.

Side note: I'm glad Ed treasures the Throw Money at Them So They'll Get Out of the Room to Go Buy Sandwiches memory as much as I do.

We'll always want more.

I hate you too, religion. Go die in a bucket.
You've cost me my best friend. You're the reason I'm procrastinating on replying to an email from said best friend that's headed "Dear, dear Melanie"; agonizes about the physical temptation he wouldn't be able to resist if we were together; ends with "We'll always want more"; and is signed "Very depressed, Micheal."

He is completely right and I agree with everything he said, including the part where he said we shouldn't hang out or communicate for awhile. Fuck. Ow. Let's just stop ripping each other's hearts out. That's a good idea.

Wednesday evening I called him to see if he wanted to go see a student union movie on our usual Thursday if I could get Katie to go with us. We ended up talking about--no. We ended up sighing those frustrated little puffy sighs that are just short of screams (at least mine were) at the situation after I wondered out loud if there was any possible way for us to work since we do love each other so much. He asked for time to write down his feelings.
Okay, fair enough.
I read those feelings on a j-school Mac in the vis com lab at 7:45am yesterday. I'd spent the better part of 36 hours alternately mooning over the possibility of finally being able to hold his hand and steeling myself for the exact words he ended up sending me.
It wasn't anything I didn't expect, but it was nothing I hoped for. And oh, the guilt and the shame and the lust and the shame again and...just...ow. Stop hurting him! And me!
He sounded like he hates himself for mentioning this, but he said he'd like to go through C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity with me. While at the state collegiate press association conference thingy my class field tripped up to, I saw a box of discarded books in their student union lobby.

This was one of them.

I liberated it (along with almost-new copies of The Bell Jar and a Flannery O'Connor collection. My fuck, the things people throw away) with the plans of reading it by myself. I already don't like the couple of sections I've scanned, but said scanning was done at 2am under slightly buzzed conditions.
This read may be doomed from its start, but I can try in my own (sober) way and give it enough respect to stay open to learning something even as it guts the happy part of my soul.

That's how I get over the loves of my life--with booze and other people. Blueberry margarita and Ed's friend the Librarian, you are my new friends.

End.

Today, I present you the death of a best friendship in three acts of Facebook messages from last night.

Act I: Hanging Out This Week
Me (10:05pm): Heyo,
Want to hang out Thursday as usual? Maybe food and meandering, if the weather's nice. Possibly a rousing game of Spot the Jorts. That's always amusing.
[Cape] said he'd go see Tangled and [Katie] said she'd go see Black Swan but neither can go until later in the weekend, so we'd have to wait for movie chaperon-age.
I feel like I should say something profound and comforting here, but it's all coming out awkward, so just have a good night.
Mike (10:10pm): Ehhhhhh awkwardness. :-/ Everybody's unfavorite.
Is Black Swan this week at [student union]? I'd be up for waiting for that one. I've wanted to see it for a while.
Me (10:11pm): Yeah, it's the 9pm one.
Black Swan, I mean. Not the awkwardness. I'm ignoring that.

Act II: Awkwardness and Love
Mike (10:16pm): Yeah. Awkwardness, alas, has no timeframe limits.
Me (10:17pm): And it makes me blurt out: Can we not hang out alone anymore?
I don't mean to be dramatic but that would be really depressing.
Mike (10:18pm): Yeah. Agreed. :-/
(10:20pm) I hate that. But I do agree. Plus it would be constantly scratching at the itch instead of getting it to go away.
Me (10:23pm): Clarification needed, please. Hanging out alone is tempting fate, is that what you mean?
Er, not fate, but the itch.
Mike (10:24pm): Yeah, kinda, and it's not like we magically quit liking each other last week. And hanging out alone together would I think just make that worse.
Me (10:25pm): Oh goddammit.
You're right. I just wish liking each other wasn't so...bad for us.
Mike (10:30pm): Darn it all to heck and back. Why can't we have fallen in love with more compatible people...
Me (10:33pm): Because--fucked if I know.
I halfway want to enjoy this but mostly I just want my best friend--that'd be you--back.
Mike (10:34pm): Ditto.
Anyway this is kind of making me sick to my stomach. :( Can we maybe pretend the awkward away? Looking directly at it doesn't seem to be helping.
(10:36pm) And I miss having you as my non-romantic-interest close friend too.

Act III: Ice Cream Time
Me (10:38pm): Yeah. Awkward's gone. What awkward? Exactly.
I think it might be ice cream time over here.
Mike (10:39pm): No ice cream here, sadly. I do have ramen, but um... poor substitute much?
Me (10:39pm): We almost made it. Five more weeks of some good old-fashion repression, and I'd be safely back in [home] and the awkward could die a rather slow but dignified death. Maybe. We could pretend better, anyway.
(10:40pm) Okay, but for real. No more beating on it. That's just making things worse. ICE CREAM, my friend.
Mike (10:40pm): ICE CREAM!
Me (10:41pm): MSG vs. sugar. Hmmmmmm. Oh so different but both oh so tempting. I bet there's ramen-flavored ice cream somewhere in the world. Probably not Columbia, though.
Mike (10:42pm): Japan. All the freakiest stuff is there. We read Cracked, we know this.
Me (10:43pm): HAHAH. Cracked: social ambassador to the Weird East since 1950.
Mike (10:46pm): No, if Cracked.com was our ambassador to pretty-much-anywhere nuclear winter would have set in roughly... *checks founding date* ...2007.
Me (10:50pm):Yeah, I was going off their masthead. But the world hasn't ended yet, so I think you're the right one here.
(10:55pm): On that positive note, I gotta go. Good night, Michael.
Mike (11:02pm): Good night, Melanie.

Fin.
Fuck you, Love.

Yeah, that's the one.

Everything I start to type about last night reads extremely boring and superficial. It might be those stupid Groucho Marx glasses staring at me from the back of my school's student paper.

I rushed through my dinner and sweated through my fundraiser playlist on my radio show so I could go cringe at about a dozen uniquely unfunny masturbation jokes, miss Mike (as in not see him because he wasn't there), and explain to Cape (who didn't wear his cape to perform) that using "spiked" as the punchline of a follow-up to a gay joke got more shocked groans than laughs because it implied S&M.
Watching the stand-up was more uncomfortable than fun because of the flopsweat you could hear as jokes died.

"Why are you so dolled up?" Said with a smile. And hair gel I'm not sure he knows how to use but I wasn't going to call him on it because I'm not sure how to use it, either.
Answer: for him, and for Mike, and for how my hair feels soft and light on my bare shoulders in that dress, and because I wanted to wear my kickass red shoes, and because it was still 85 degrees outside at 10:30pm.
And J, the tiny computer scientist doctoral candidate I know from robotics who likes to wear a giant beard and sunglasses with a checked blazer and the occasional utility kilt hugged me in greeting and told me I smelled delicious. I, uh, guess the new deodorant's working okay then.

I did run into Mike earlier, when we got to my dorm at the same time in the morning for different things (meeting a tutoree, grabbing a camera). It felt normal, especially the part when I punched his shoulder in parting, but it also felt like we're both terrified to do or say anything with more emotional depth than "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!"
My brain insisted on opening a tiny box of celebration that has let out all the memories I've stored of Mike for new examination. Look! There, where you thought he was so adorable? He liked you, too! At the same time! Great. That's great, memory, really. Maybe if I chew on you enough you'll give me something useful.

Theories of communication.

I think if me and Mike start communicating exclusively through typing funnies at each other over the Internet and arriving separately at group activities, we might just make it.
Theory to be tested tomorrow. In my favorite sundress.
WHAT? It's not like--
Oh, just FUCK.

Empty symbolism.

It's been five months today. Over done with gone.

And now it's not staring me in the face when I need a shower.

I've moved on to recovering from last night's radio station dance party (I went with Ed and his girlfriend, who seems super sweet and they were adorable, two-stepping to electronica around all the people trying to make babies through their bar clothes on the dance floor, and I just let my body dance however the hell it wanted, and I had a great happy very non-awkward time), waiting for my actions to refresh in Echo Bazaar so I can play through a full set tonight, starting the audio book of Zadie Smith's On Beauty while cleaning out my overflowing desk, and thinking about the shoulder of Mike's black hoodie every time I close my eyes (it's short story research, I swear. Beginning vignette about What Happens at the [Free] Movies. A whole series that will make a million in the very lucrative wallpaper-for-fellow-writers'-cardboard-boxes market).

This has been the weirdest five months of my life in terrible ways, but I'm very fucking glad I broke up with BF when I did. Underneath all the angst (you might have to crowbar up a corner of this blog to see that deeply), I'm positive it was the right decision. *stamp*

On a geeky note, during our serious talk Mike said the reason he hasn't written his side of our fan fiction in LIKE FOREVER is because every time he'd try to write, it'd go in the direction of Echo Bazaar's equivalent of what happened between us at the movies.
Our characters aren't us, though. I thought that's what we were pretending when we started this.
And if we can't touch each other in real life, can we get it out of our systems through writing to each other? How much of a pervert would I sound like if I suggested this?
I won't suggest it. I promise. I just really miss our tag-team adventure writing, full stop, no innuendo meant whatsoever.

To Mike.

Thank you for giving me an excuse to belt this out in the empty newsroom during lunch today. It didn't solve anything, but damn it felt good.



And it's out of my system now. I swear.

Your dramatically inclined handsy heathen friend who is terrible at singing but likes to anyway,
Mel

No more movies in the dark alone.

Shit fire and save the matches.

You know how smug I was about me and Mike being the textbook example of how a man and a woman can in fact be close platonic friends, if ones that pretend sexual tension doesn’t exist? Trust me. I was smug about that and how deeply we love each other as friends.
Well. I was smug until tonight, when our ignored spark started burning.
We met up to watch the 9pm free student union movie like we have 5,000 other Thursday nights. We joked around and ate and talked like we have since forever.
I gave him a noogie and asked if that made him uncomfortable; he said just don’t do anything obviously sexual (which immediately made me think of starting a strip tease in the middle of the student union). Okay, so: boundary noted.
When we sat down in the theater before the movie and I stretched, he touched my bellybutton exposed by my sweater hem riding up. That surprised the hell out of me, but…sure, let’s just go with it. Mostly it felt unfair because both his shirts were tightly tucked in.
As the lights go down and we’re still giving each other shit and halfway looking for Cape to walk in after grabbing another ride, we settle into those tiny-ass chairs which make it easier to let our knees touch than not. When the movie starts, Mike puts his arm across my back, and I see if I can get away with resting my head on his shoulder.
I can. He lets me, and oh God it’s such a comfortable rush.
I keep my arm as still as I possibly can resting in between us, fingers on his knee and DO NOT DO THAT THING WHERE YOU STROKE, FINGERS. DON’T. STAY STILL FOR ONCE IN YOUR EAGER LITTLE LIVES.
At one point, he pulls us apart to respond to a text message on his phone. I pull away too and try to figure out what just happened, and then we fall back into place when he’s done and I’m just as romantically comfort-drunk as before.
Then his hand drops to cup my waist. His fingers start MOVING. Mine do, too, curled up against his chest.

*runs screaming from the room*

That’s not what we did. But he did lean over and whisper, “We should leave the movie.” We did, shaking and staring at the floor. With normal people, this would be a husky invitation to one or another’s place to make out or hook up, any regret to be left to the morning.

Since it was me and Mike, we had to have a serious talk about what just happened.
He likes me. He’s attracted to me, he’s felt and catalogued and repressed everything between us exactly like I have for the past year and a half, and this is how it comes out.
Follows is the upshot of the rest of our conversation.
Mike: “If you were a Christian, I’d have tried to start dating you a long time ago.”
Me: “If you didn’t believe in God, I would’ve jumped you already.”
Verdict: “Maybe we shouldn’t go see movies alone in the dark anymore.”
We didn’t solve anything that a little healthy repression wouldn’t’ve taken care of, at least until I get out of school. Five motherfucking weeks; I thought we could make it.

I don’t know whether to be in joyful awe at such strong proof of such a strong mutual attraction, relieved that Mike felt just as deeply and it wasn’t my overactive imagination (which is so very rarely justified on things romantic), or terribly beaten down that I’ve lost my best friend to sex and Jesus.

Bookmarks.

"We're not on the same page, but we see each others' bookmark."

I'm so frustrated.
The more I try to talk about it, the less I make sense. Why am I so bad at coordinating things?

I’m going home again this weekend, voluntarily. I want to go home because lately it’s been just as—let’s not say fun. Let’s say relaxing. It’s been just as relaxing going home as staying up here. Here, I root around for stuff to do and people to do it with. Lately the results haven’t been worth the efforts, and that’s more depressing than lying around in my dorm all weekend. Trust me; I’ve done studies.

There's a thick-ass fog layered over everything I think right now. Not a good time, extreme nihilistic apathy.

Sudden pleasant things.

Mike: "A pregnant pause, then."
Me: "I won't go into any detail but that's not physically possible for me right now."
Mike: "Ah, okay. That's already too much detail."

Does anyone know the proper etiquette for when you run into someone you like but are in the early stages of getting to know and they're on their cell phone? Are you suppose to:

• rapidly calculate how much you want to talk to them versus how much they probably want to talk to you on a sliding scale of how nice the weather is and in what sort of hurry you are while walking towards them? 
• eavesdrop on their side of the conversation to see if it sounds like they're almost done, then slow down/smile and wave and move on accordingly?
• stutter to a stop, look uncertain, and blush until they actually do hang up?

Spotting Cape in the wild makes me do strange things like that last clump of social awkwardness listed. But we segued pretty smoothly into a walk to his car where it was parked downtown.
After fits of I-want-it-NOW-itis, I've come to realize that it's always more fun seeing him spontaneously anyway because it's not infused with desperation. It's just taking advantage of a sudden pleasent thing, like a free chocolate bar.

Yeah. That happened too, and it was also delicious.

A whiff of sophomore year.

My fuck.
That was Ed. It's been almost exactly two years since we curled up on my dorm bed to watch a movie and we kissed like magnets.
No, I wasn't single when that happened.
Now he's got a girlfriend and is no longer a virgin. He invited me to hang out with them if I want. I wonder if she's pretty.
I halfway expected to see him at the con (yes, another one. I stumbled into this one on accident, I swear. I forgot the university's anime club was taking over the student union this weekend and I wandered in and stayed for hovering nostalgia), but in an abstract way. But he was there, in a chair I could sit next to. Which I did.



It made my heart want to scream, so after he and his brother left I took a rambling walk around town to clear my head. I'm still a little freaked out. Can this be any sort of good?

Threesome.

That's on the top of my Words I Never Expected to Hear Mike Say list. He made me cough out a piece of roast beef in surprise last night.

We met up for our weekly excuse to eat and talk nerdy and laugh at each other and possibly watch a movie yesterday as soon as I got out of the j-school. (It's been a stressful week. I don't want to talk about it.) We ate and talked about threesomes in Echo Bazaar, split so I could go to a record-breakingly short 18 minute radio station meeting, and met up again after I took a shower and put on jeans and red lipstick before he drove us over to the movie theater on top of a parking garage/shopping center that nobody goes to anymore so we could use free tickets his roommate Cape could give us because he's an assistant manager up there.

Over spring break, I sent Cape a Facebook message saying that I enjoyed hanging out with him and I hoped we could hang out some more if his vampire spoof and my job-hunting don't take up the entire rest of our semesters. When I got back, he had replied with sure and he hoped he didn't make it seem like he didn't want to talk to me.
Let's blame Mike for that because I did complain to him--once, in a fit of frustrated loneliness that he got to hear because he's my only friend--about His Roommate's unexplained silence. Yesterday right after dinner he said, "[Roommate] did text you back, didn't he?" I call interference, but not out loud because then I start sounding like Suitemate.

Cape had on a navy blazer and a tie and his own gold-colored nameplate and everything. Mike would laugh his ass off to hear me say this (I HEAR YOU, MIKEY BOY) but Cape was downright handsome. Maybe it was the pinkish neon lighting in the dim, deserted lobby--it sort of felt like being in the middle of a merry-go-round at night. But it's also his floppy hair. I like his floppy hair.

I saw their house, too. It made me shy.
We got to the theater early so I told Mike to show me where they lived since he's been to my dorm at least half a dozen times. I was thinking just a slow drive-by tour, but he pulled into their driveway and unlatched the screen door and I padded in after him.
It was messy but in an interesting archeological way. I wanted to dig without disturbing anything; I had to keep slapping away my own impulse to plunge into the World Dialect Workbook open on a music stand, run my fingers down DVD spines, squint at the handwritten list scrawled on the back of a hymn copy.
But Mike had no such qualms and did all that for me.
He showed me his room, too, which. I mean. It looked like him, like where he stores the parts of his personality that he can't fit into his brain or heart or computer bag. Which is exactly what rooms are for.
It didn't feel sexual, it just felt very personal.
When we went to the theater for real, I couldn't think of a goddamn thing to say to Cape except "How's that German accent practice coming along? And your crunches? Get more than 15 out today?" which I didn't say for fear of being profoundly creepy.
But then when I beat Mike out of the bathroom a few minutes later, I did manage to respond to Cape's smile and greeting in a way that struck up a conversation.
Fuck save me from boys with crinkly-eyed smiles.

And who like to hug. Me apologizing for being a bit clingy because I miss having an excuse to do that just made Mike reach over and hug me harder. When he let me off in front of my dorm at the end of the night, we hugged sideways in the front of his car so our cheeks squished together. I felt his beard stubble my own chin.

Sweet merciful gahhhhh, he's making me melt.

Yet I'm calm. Last night was happy and peaceful instead of confusing. I call that progress. 

Mozzer Friday.

I'm getting all my boy angst out in this one post before I go on spring break. I don't want to think about whether writing my phone number and a note that said "Hey, let me know if you get that guitar club going" on an old library card catalog slip and then slipping it under Guitar and Biology guy's windshield wipers was creepy after watching him jam out with one of the guys from the radio show after me.
I don't want to think about why Prettyboy or Cape were so interested in talking with me and presumably continuing the conversations later and have said nothing after I responded cheerfully affirmative.
I don't want to dissect Mike's and my fan-fiction as a map into how we truly feel about each other. That's a little nerdy for even us.
I don't want to miss BF.
I don't want to feel like my brain is scrambling for a piece I think I'm missing when I skip around to different boys like they're different job options. It's been really teeth-grindingly jarring to realize that my subconscious thinks I need a man to be happy. And that I've been agreeing with it without really noticing.

Staring at an empty email inbox for hours on end will be easy enough to avoid. I'm going to impose a 10p.m. to whenever-I-get-up a.m. cell phone shut-off, too.

So. Take it away, Mr. Morrissey.



Reader, that's the last time I'll do that to you. I promise.

Oh God. Fan fiction.

Does anyone ever find love writing a joint fan-fiction about a new computer text-based game back and forth with his/her best friend?
There is absolutely no reason I ask this. Nope. Certainly not from personal experience over the last couple of days. I have for sure not started an epic writing quest with Mike over Facebook message that makes me happier than the journalism award contest form my editing TA handed to me to fill out to enter my “in-depth” Hunter S. Thomspson Lite article. Uh uh.

About that form: It might just be so we have a horse in the race. Fuck knows my editing professor had enough problems with it that he spilled out in green ink. (Sometimes I feel like laminating a 3 X 5 card that says, “I know what you mean, I just can’t read what you wrote” to hold up during our editing talks.)
But it’s my horse. Small validation.

More validation: Bluetooth commented on my last Facebook status. It was random and had nothing to do with anything except making me wonder about sex again. He always makes me do that.

I met another pretty boy while I was playing "Me and Bobby McGee" on the third floor of the Russell House tonight after dinner.

Not my guitar. But still catnip.

"Is it wrong to want to give back to the place that made me so much of what I am now?"
"No, no, but--how much more are you planning to give?"

Glad we did this.

Friday night I might've succeeded in boring a stalker away from me. Uh, victory is mine?
I asked the Facebook message guy if he wanted to walk downtown with me for a live DJ show the radio station was sponsoring. I wanted to go without getting attacked, Facebook message guy seemed nice, and neither one of us wanted to spend Friday night alone in our rooms. In that order.

I fluctuated between dread and excitement, finally settling somewhere in between when I stepped out to meet him.
It was the perfect weather to walk around outside. Which we did, a lot, between going in and out of the bar trying to figure out when the goddamn show actually started and him running his fingers up my knee (DUDE. NO. I'm wearing jeans, but--NO).  Without saying much, except when he'd talk at me. When I realized how bored I was getting, I fell into Journalist Mode (tm): asked a bunch of questions and nodded a lot.  

And this happened at some point.

Mike actually commented on that when I hung out with him last night. He said he and Cape both noticed that they tend to talk a lot more around me than they do around other people.
"Well, she is a journalism major. She's trained to be good at interviewing."
"...Huh. I never thought of that."
Dammit, Mike. Stop being insightful enough to make my interest in Cape sound non-personal. Because it's totally personal in his case. And yours. Help me use this power for good, such as figuring out how much you two talk about me and how I can use this system to my advantage without creeping either one of you out.

Yesterday was a good day, a best friends day. I went with Katie to see an exhibit on rock photography and then to Publix to get icing for her dinosaurs go to the Oscars cookies before meeting Mike for dinner and prowling around the city watching the sun set and letting the night settle in on the top level of a parking garage while talking about everything.

In conclusion, Mike showed me this Dave Barry column and it made me grow abs I laughed so hard. We understand each other, is my point. *splud*

"Tell [Cape] I said hi. I'm sure he'll be excited." 
"Rwar."
"Yeah, tell him I said that."

Facebook official.

What is it about Facebook that makes everything seem more official? Is it that postings make our social lives more official by recording and broadcasting things everybody use to forget in two seconds?
Is it because it lets us track exact dates and times of small things that make the biggest impact?
I’m a details person. Details make life real. Take a concept like “breaking up with my first boyfriend after almost 3 years;” okay. Broadly, that sucks. Abstractly, that sucks. Everyone can tell that sucks from the general statement.
But what has really killed me is the details. More importantly, what’s killing me is how Facebook is creating new details. Like telling me exactly when I pushed my ex-boyfriend out of my life for good.

It was Wednesday night. I sent him this message:

This is just to tell you that I'm sorry for being such an emotional bitch at you. I handled things badly, and you didn't deserve any of it. I do miss you but I don't know whether I should actually say that or not. Anyway, it's there.
Happy post-ship and pre-regionals.

This morning, I noticed I had one less friend than I had the last time I logged in. When that happens, normally I either tell myself to not care (“I’m sure it’s just someone you don’t even know who’s cleaning our their friends box. Like you should.” I let my friend box linger) or do a quick check to make sure I didn’t piss off any of my favorite people.
I figured it was BF this time, but I confirmed it. Yep. Cut off.

It hurts. Why does it hurt? I broke up with him; it was my choice.
It hurts because I want to be the victim of the mean ex who won’t talk to me even to hear me say I’m sorry. Because being a victim is easier and feels better than feeling all this goddamn guilt. Because the whole time I was with BF, I would lash out at him and then hand him the decision about what to do with my own anger, frustration, and discontent.
I finally left him one too many post-breakup communications. I pushed him into being the one to cut our final ties because I was too weak to do it myself. Passive-aggressiveness at its highest/lowest art, my friends.
It had to be done. I did it badly and not really on purpose, but it’s done.
Although you don’t have to be Facebook friends to send a message to someone. Maybe Zuckerberg thought of this when he designed the message feature. It’s useful for reporters, though I promise on my love of writing’s grave that I will not contact BF anymore.

It’s official. Thanks, Facebook.

Why do I care?

Why do I care?

I don't. I seriously just--don't.
We have to get past this question from our editing professor every day, and I don't have any more answers for him or myself. Or my parents, although for them I'm good enough at pretending I care about things.

But I dread every day of the week now. They're either stressful or lonely as hell. Both, lately. A lot.
Yeah, I'm trying to combat that.

My metaphor needs a refill.

It feels like bashing against a brick wall that spontaneously heals whatever chip I've managed to make in it.
Everybody feels like this at some point or another, right? Right?

Hairy shins.

I lost it yesterday when I saw a picture BF posted of himself to show how nice the weather's gotten around here. Cargo shorts, hairy legs, white New Balances, full length white socks pulled all the way up. With lowtops. Boy, if it's cold enough to cover your shins, you should wear jeans. Pull down your goddamn socks.
That's always bothered me.
But it made me remember the good parts about being with him in the summer. They're boring to talk about and chances are you can guess like 95% of them, but it got me depressed anyway because talking about them is not the point; it's the feelings I miss like hell, okay?



Janis understands.

In other news, I got to talk with real live authors about anti-heroes and post apocalypic wastelands yesterday.
Today, I've gotten in a Facebook message conversation with a boy I met at one of the radio station dance parties like two years ago. I went to one on a weekend BF was roboting out of town, dance with this guy, and then felt guilty all around when I told him I had a boyfriend. Avoided the hell out of Facebook for a weekend. Which was easy when my boyfriend got back.
Now Dance Guy is going in for the kill, I think, with strategic questions about what I do for fun on the weekends and--
...And there it goes. "So the last time I talked to you, you were dating this guy for a long time. What happen with that?"
I don't know why I do this. I don't want to want attention. I want to be happy staying in by myself on Fridays and Saturdays. Or else immediately jump to the same comfort zone I had with BF. I want to go binary.

Putting out fires.

That's been my week, basically.

Thursday night, I dumped my angst on Mike, along with a couple tears on his blue checkered shirt that always makes me think of picnicking with Bob Veela. 
Just sitting there being hugged and hugging him back made me feel human again. He touched his forehead to mine and oh God I almost started crying again.
Then he started telling me incriminatingly funny stories about his roommate, and then answered his phone and told me said roommate would be watching the movie with us after all, and so I sat between them for The Social Network and said maybe two words to his roommate and tried to decide whether or not to dodge elbows once the lights went down. It's a losing battle in those seats anyway.
His roommate disappeared as soon as it ended. I don't know, either. STOP GOING AWAY AS SOON AS I GET INTERESTED IN YOU. That's all I'll say about that. Mike said it's par for the Cape course.

"I love you very much."
Mike said that last night, to me, when I walked him to his car after the movie. We were mid-hug and I pulled away to unsquish my ear and ask him to repeat himself because I wanted to make sure I heard him right.
"Yeah, that's what I thought you said. I love you, too."
It was serious and simple and true.
I don't know how to make a non-awkward segue that this was about friendship without getting all goofball corny or unfairly snarky about the moment, so here's another bonding moment I inflicted on Mike in lighter times:



He now loves Shatner, and it's all my fault. Heh.

Don't let them see you cry.

The good:

1. My editing professor thinks my writing's editable. That's a compliment.
2. One more day of spot news coverage, aka Go Get a Story and Audio and Pictures and Multimedia Oh Yeah and Your Lead Source's Liver and/or Second Born, Preferably Both for Verification, and Make Sure It's All Perfect and Posted in about 12 hours. And for my finale, I get to cover a gaming con. 
3. Michael finally settled the air with Suitemate. 
4. I saw Cape this evening, when I was emerging from the newsroom and he was waiting to descend for his Psych 101 class. (Remember the notes I lent him last semester? Yeah, didn't help.)
   Sometimes I wonder why I'm attracted to people with weird hair. And paint on their fingers. And guys who wear cargo shorts. Must be that shocking length of shapely calf emerging after the winter frost.
   We talked, and--I don't know why something ordinary like pleasant conversation feels so good. Even just describing it like that makes it sound cheesy. 
5. After dinner, I got an impromptu guitar lesson from a guy who was playing near where I sat down to eat in the student union. We ended up talking about music and theory (that was mostly him, showing me how chords move around on the fretboard) and high school band and our majors for about an hour and a half. We exchanged email addresses. He wants to start a guitar club. 

The bad:

1. My dad thinks I don't write like a newspaper writer and that that's a bad thing. And he called me to tell me when I was on my way to report a, you know, newspaper-like story. When my editing professor, who earns his own Jaws-based theme song when he comes cruising the newsroom, does less damage to my ego than my dad does, I have to go cry in a bathroom stall for five minutes or so.
2. Spot news = 12 hour days during which I can't get other shit done. I'm still sore from yesterday's excursion.
3. She cried. A lot. Plus, now we all know how we feel about each other and we're still all lonely bastards.
4. I saw BF in his car again as I walked away.
   Cape can't go to the movie tomorrow.
5. Guitar Club would pause every few minutes to spit out chewing tobacco into a clear plastic water bottle. He did apologize for that, though.
   I smelled like a day of researching in the newsroom: baked sweat and dust.

Condescending question of the day: "Do you know Jimmi Hendrix?"
...No. No, dude, I have no idea who you're talking about. <heavy, heavy, blink-tastic sarcasm>
Random editing teacher outburst of the week so far: "Can someone tell me why the TV's not on? How will we know if there's a fire, down here?"
The sad part is he's right. We would have no idea until we start roasting like Kenny Roger's chicken.

Because I can.

Well, that was unnecessarily boring and depressing.



I'm going to Facebook message Cape to see if he wants to hang out on purpose sometime next weekend. I have no confidence he'll apply in the affirmative.
This was my first Valentine's Day with BF.
"Okay, I'm calling it. No more goat jokes."

Social experiment Saturday.

What can I say about my Friday night when it consisted of my graphics professor telling me to go home at 4:30pm; me filling up my student union dinner cup only halfway, spiking the diet Dr. Pepper with hard lemonade and drinking it through the lid so I could have it with dinner at the library to read the latest copy of Wired; running into a high school friend when I went to see the Vagina Monologues; walking to the drugstore to buy a heart-shaped box of chocolate and eating it because I wanted chocolate more than I wanted to feel skinny; and celebrating the fact that my roommate went home by handling myself and then dancing around to Best of Motown while I brushed my teeth at one in the morning?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

I didn't expect Bluetooth to text a booty call. I halfway wanted him to and 86% hoped he would. According to Suitemate, he officially broke it off with Clingy last Sunday on their coffee date. I'm going to call it on myself, too: cleared of complications (Well. That I know of.) and still no text = he broke it off with me, too, only shredding with a razor instead of cutting clean with scissors.
Violent imagery, but I've come to peace with the end because it feels just as good and only a little lonlier when I handle myself.
I completely expected, wanted, and hoped for Cape to continue the Facebook message conversation we'd been having about Suitemate and Auto-Tune in the morning while I was trying to rewrite an article draft and failing miserably in the newsroom. (Eventually I said "fuck it," took an early lunch break, and got shit done in the library.) It just stopped at 11am and he hasn't replied yet. Here we go again, right?

Plans for today:
3pm. A Night to Remember for Singles Speed Dating, aka Let's Group All the Lonely Kids from the Weird Arty Dorms and Imply That It's Possible to Arrange an Orgy with a Prom Theme by Monday.
I'm going because hi, my name is Melanie and I'm addicted to flirting and don't know where else to start picking up girls. There'll be a straight side and a gay/bisexual side, I've been told. I plan on jumping the fence.
Thank fuck Suitemate's not going. I thought she was--SHE thought she was, until Wednesday's date with Mike and bowling balls.
Now all I want is Cappy's Jamaican Me Horny t-shirt from that episode of Greek where Rusty makes him go speed dating. 
6pm. Dinner at student union. Didn't even think about wanting to cook this weekend.
10pm. I was just going to walk downtown and wander into the first bar that had good music and pool going, but Facebook gave me a purpose. My guitar teacher's playing an acoustic set tonight at Restaraunt Slash Bar in the new downtown, so now I have a definite destination AND a place where I was last seen in case I get mugged or raped or stabbed.

Will report back. Social Experiment Saturday ahoy.

Unexpected dialogue.

My coat smells like coffee.
I just got back from playing chess with Cape in a coffeeshop just off campus. He easily beat me in our two games. "The more you fight this, the more I enjoy it. ...That sounds way worse than I meant it."

Mike and Suitemate met me for the 6pm movie after they went on an officially sanctioned date. They both agreed to another chance with each other. I think right now they're dating but not in a relationship. A small part of my soul died a little when Mike told me that.
But. They're happy. That's good. By their third or fourth date, I will be able to go "aww" at the thought. It'll just take a small amount of time and they don't have to know that.

After the movie, Cape was outside waiting so he and Mike could go to the latest radio station training meeting. I walked them up, they sit down, and Cape goes, "You know, I just realized, I don't really want to do this anymore." He walks out. Spluttering, and because that's where I was going anyway, I followed him.
We ended up walking around campus, circling the library a couple times while I let all the rants I've put up on here (except for the Bluetooth sexytime ones; I'm not THAT indiscreet) explode out of me. Cape's not fond of Mike + Suitemate either because he doesn't think Mike actually likes Suitemate.
Are we suppose to save him? Her? Is that our place? (No, by the way. It's his/her own damn life.)

At one point after he'd been talking about his religion and how it affects his views on homosexuality because that's part of the Bible too, I said, "I should get this over with. I'm a bisexual atheist."
Apparently, "Before you had a face in my mind, you were Atheist Melanie." Oh. Good show, then.
I walked him to his car, he said he'd drive me back, we both said we wanted to avoid work we needed to do, he mentioned chess at the coffeeshop. Bingo. Er, checkmate.
He plays the keytar and bass, has never heard a song that couldn't use more synth. I...maybe it's a good thing he doesn't want to share his music on air. He let me listen to his iPod while we were playing chess and I let him listen to the new Kanye West album I had in my CD player in his car. Neither one of us was overly impressed, but I liked talking with him.
No future plans made. Eh, we'll see

I didn't get to play him this, which after seven weeks I've finally decided is my favorite song off of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Maybe:

Science fiction double feature.

This morning, I opened my school email account like I always do--with a cringe and an overwhelming sense of inadequacy that will be called out in strong words by my writing/editing professor.

Thanks for the confidence, j-school.

But I was pleasantly surprised to (also) find an email from Cape McFloppy Hair, saying he'd like to read my sci fi stories I told him about and further explaining a script of his that he talked about while we were waiting for the comedian to go on last night. This turned into a couple back-and-forth paragraphs about our opinions on themes in science fiction in general. I tacked on my sleep-bot and superhero stories, went to lunch with a smile on my face...

Train of thought: I kind of like this guy. I've kind of liked approximately a half dozen guys since I got back from winter break. That's the most enjoyable conversation I've had about writing in awhile. I kind of miss dates. Did he get home okay last night?

...and ran into him five hours later, as I was lugging camera equipment back to my dorm and he was going the other way for a 5:30pm class.
And then Mike called to see if I could meet him for dinner while Mike waited on Cape to get out of class so Cape could ride home with Mike instead of in Cape's busted up oil-eating Civic.
I don't know why that makes me feel slightly incestuously creepy. They're roommates, for fuck's sake. I should probably be more creeped out by the fact that this spell check knows how to correctly spell "incestuously."

Sending my stories to people I barely know is not the breathless stones-shriveling act of sheer audacity it feels like when I send them to good friends. As long as I don't think you'll recognize yourself in my fiction, I'm fearless.

Mike really liked the sweater I wore today. He spent five minutes complimenting how flattering it is on me, and then another two wondering out loud if that sounded creepy. He can, in fact, lift me off the ground, and it's taken him a year and a half to say something parental about my giant-ass backpack.

"Looking for freelance starving artist." Aren't we all?  Or do I have that reversed?

Losing my religion.

Next time, I should probably tell Mike's nice Christian roommate--the aspiring movie director with a great flap of hair that tries to defy gravity and almost makes it, the one who lent me a cape last semester and is now training to be a DJ with the school station so he can play Norwegian death metal on air at 2 in the morning--that I'm an atheist.

I ran into him when I grabbed dinner and ended up eating and going to see this week's comedian with him...then joining up with the church small group he usually goes to on Tuesday nights.
No actual religion, just ice cream and friendly people; no romantic overtures, just bumping elbows in the too-small seats.
So I'll save the scarlet A. Maybe Mike's already told him anyway.

Dodging breasts.

The first unsolicited text message I get from Bluetooth in like three weeks is this little gem.

Wow, [his roommate] has picked up the trashiest girl ever. She literally has been rolling around whith her titties out trying to get me to suck them.

A few things, starting with DON'T CALL THEM TITTIES:

1. Am I suppose to be jealous?
2. Since when did he turn into a prude and stop liking the breast action this girl wants him to perform? I seem to remember that's one of his favorite parts.
3. I've just gotten back from a 14 hour day from a shitty night of sleep and dealing with the most complicated filing system on campus and hearing that the upstart genre magazine I might've sold some sci fi to was brought down by an insider posing as an editor of an already-established house. Yeah. I have no patients for your horndog college boy braggings.
4. Especially when that's all you want to tell me. FUCK. OFF.

What do I even do with this shit?
Edit: I texted him that since he got me thinking about sex, I was going to have some alone time before bed.
I got to use the "handled myself well" line this time.
Attention-starved me is still disgusted at him.

While I breathe, I hope.

It's either that or stare at the big blank in front of me and go crazy depressed trying to fill it.
On Friday, I constructed a miniature happy place at my computer cubicle in the j-school basement where I spend my most stressful minutes trying to bang out a story my editing teacher will accept for grading.

Calligraphy: from girl on my left. Smoldering: all from Hugh.

I spent the rest of the weekend depressed at my parents' house. Saturday night, I fell asleep before 10:30pm listening to an Eric Clapton's greatest hits album and woke up to the fast version of "Layla" with drool on my pillow and the smell of my own pussy on my fingers. Rolled over and slept for 11 hours.

I am depressed. I can't make myself care about anything and I'm tired all the time. Let's go to some Frequently Asked Questions to find out why, shall we?
Q: Do you regret your decision? (From my mom. She's talking about me dumping BF. She's asked this at least once every time I've gone home since then.)
A: Yeah, to be honest. I threw away one of my best friends and a giant chunk of my support system just exactly when I need both the most.
Q: But it's not really about BF specifically, is it?
A: No. I'm not scared of being alone. I'm scared of being lonely. Which is what I am right now.
Q: Are you ever going to talk to/hang out with Mike alone again?
A: Yeah. He actually called me during class and left a "rambling" voice message (like a minute thirty long. Ha. I'm the whole reason Katie doesn't check her voicemail anymore.) about grabbing dinner Friday. I called him back and had to tell him I was going home, like, then. But the thought made me happy.
Q: Are you in love with Mike?
A: Maybe. Probably. I love the way he always deliberately says my name when we part for the night, if that means anything.
Q: Are you ever going to speak to/have sex with Bluetooth again?
A: No. No, he doesn't want me anymore, and I'm tired of chasing him.
According to Suitemate, he and Clingy went on a coffee date today to discuss their status. Finally some straight talking, or maybe that's my optimism showing.
I want to kick him in the balls as an ending punctuation. Closure, you understand.
Q: So whatcha doing this weekend? (From my dad. He asks this all the time and in so doing, inspires some great big lies from me.)
Well, today I sat and listened to a guitar busker on the steps of the library. He was cute and he played "Wonderwall" and all his songs kind of sounded like "Wonderwall" but he was cute and I hope I didn't freak him out by being the only one sitting there listening.
Other than that, I plan on frying my retinas with the Internet and ignoring everything else except my soft dark bed in a couple hours.

I can't do this.

Both sides now.

Today, I spent the last twenty minutes of the workday (no I don't get paid and yes it's for school but dammit, it's a workday) putting my reporting skills to good use by Facebook stalking a guy I've randomly run into four times since early December:

1. Met him on the night I went to hear my guitar teacher's band with Bluetooth. He's the guy with whom I shouted "Sweet Child O' Mine" over the expensive cover band.
2. He recognized me when I went to see the free student union movie last Thursday. We both got there really early. I was wearing the same purple sweater, he said hi, and my brain did that thing where it goes "hm I think maybe yes oh yeah hi!" in rapid clicks of recognition.
3. He was in one of the student film thingies in the running for last Friday's finale. I saw him there in his mock trial suit because that's where he was headed right afterward.
4. This morning at the Statehouse I saw him as I was picking my coins and cell phone and j-school DSL out of one of those dog bowls they put through the metal detector in the lobby. We were both working, and we both smiled and exchanged pleasantries. He looks nice in a suit. 

Facebooked the friend we both have in common --> looked up the school's mock trial team --> got his full name --> found him on Facebook using cross-references --> sent a friend request referencing our coincidental meetings to identify myself. Also used a smiley at the end. Friend request accepted.
He might even be single.
AND HE LIKES TOP GEAR. SCORE. Can I call this one Hamster?

Mike called Suitemate and told her he just wants to be friends.
The three of us went to see The King's Speech this evening. He drove us in his old white Cutlass that shudders every time he revvs it. I sat in back but I got to hold his sword the whole time because it was back there too.
That sounds really dirty the more I say it: "I got to hold his sword."
But they argued. Like, for real. As in, he would start teasing her and she'd get defensive and all of a sudden it'd turn into a real argument. "Kids, don't make me turn this [student union, field trip] around." I actually SAID that MORE THAN ONCE.
She froze him out the whole way home so I blathered on about my possible article on our city's public transportation and made Mike talk about the science and engineering career fair until we got back and she hugged him and I punched him on the shoulder and then a few minutes later he texted me to ask if he should call her tonight or tomorrow and I told him to get it over with and ten minutes after that she came into the computer lab and cried on my shoulder and he texted me about how that was done, then and she sobbed about wanting her mother and having a dual pity party with Clingy and ice cream and chick flicks this weekend.
Hugs, people. Lots and lots of hugs.

Go forth and log stuff.

Everybody tells me how they feel about each other, and I wish they would stop talking to me and go straighten things out amongst themselves. 

Mike and I are going to see The King's Speech tomorrow, at an actual full-priced off-campus regular movie theater. Scandalous, I know, but Suitemate's coming too and SHE'S SO EXCITED OH MY GOD!!



I saw BF yesterday. He was driving his car down the hill to robotics while I was walking up to my radio show.
Sometimes at night, I mentally talk myself to sleep by writing Facebook messages to him that I'll never send. They're all variations on the same theme: I'm sorry for being such a bitch.

Why did I stay sober for this?

Never again, my friends.
I'm not even talking about Bluetooth; we'll get to him in a minute. Right at this second I'm talking about never, ever again relying on campus-run activities on a Friday night or the people who like to go to campus-run activities on a Friday night for a fun Friday night.
It doesn't fucking work.

Okay, picture this: the state fair with all its long lines and corn dogs and fried pickles (no, really, get that specific image of a puke-smelling dill pickle all up in your head and nose and gag reflex) and crowd and longass lines, but without the rides or clear night air or one-man band that makes the experience awesomely chintzy.
We stood in line in the student union for cheap metal engravings, airbrush tattoos (not me for this one, thanks--am morally allergic to anything on my skin that makes me look stupid), and caricatures. Standing in line took fucking HOURS.

I've been practicing my shit-eating grin.

Hours in which I had to  listen to Suitemate and Clingy giggle over Bluetooth, who by the way was standing right there. He flirted hard with her, touching and hugging and joking about sex and basically pulling all his Stock Moves (they worked on me too, okay?) while she took in the attention like a cat, with a sort of arching-back smugness and almost purring but not quite. But wanting to.
Completely independent of any complications, Suitemate and Clingy are the two most annoying people I've ever stood in longass lines with.
It made me want to stab all three of them.
Clingy's twin sister I shall call Subdue. I didn't want to stab her. She seemed coolly low-key and willing to call anyone out on their ridiculousness.  Truly refreshing.

Mike was suppose to go too but he's sick now. Which was another thing Suitemate was bitching about all last night, only she tried to keep it secret and coded even though we all knew exactly who she was talking about.

Bluetooth did not ignore me. I made a well-placed American Psycho reference, he surreptitiously poked me once in awhile, we contemplated using his mustard/ketchup puddles for finger painting instead of corndog coating.
But I got so jealous I had to step outside and put my hot forehead on a cold railing for a few minutes. And at one point, I was lying down in the middle of the basement mail room twitching at the sound of Clingy and Bluetooth playing foozball in the game room next door. I didn't have to check my mail. It was midnight on a Friday, not a shouting distance of being open.
Jealous. Yeah.
I don't want to be his girlfriend. I kept repeating this to myself. Nope. Don't really like him all that much as a person. But dammit. DAMMIT. OW. Secret sex lives hurt, y'all. This was exactly why I was not planning to and still am not going to the movies with them tonight. Not that they want me there anyway.

I was angling to walk him to his car alone and possibly thus grab a makeout minute or two, but that didn't even happen. We all walked to Clingy's car in the garage and then she drove him to his street-parked car, dumping me and Suitemate off at our dorm on the way.
FUCK YOU GUYS AND THE MATCHMAKING SUV YOU RODE IN ON. CHRIST ON A CRACKER.

I was fuming when I got back into the dorm. Fuming. I flung myself down on the nearest lobby couch, grabbed a year-old copy of Us Weekly that I started ripping through without reading, and initiated a texting conversation with Bluetooth that started like this:

Me: Why did I stay sober for that?
His response was immediate: Fucked if I know. What a waste of a night.

HA! All of a sudden I was validated. Within twenty minutes, I learned that he thinks Suitemate is annoying, too. He's already fended off a girlfriend offer from Clingy but he still loves the attention.
Oh, my god. *takes deep breaths of fresh air* It's not about competing against another girl for his attention. It's about finding out he feels the same combination of bored and pissed off that I do and also had to hide it for four hour and now wants to bitch about it too. Eureka.

Is there a female equivalent of blue balls? Mauve clitoris, maybe?

PS. Mike called me Thursday while I was eating dinner at the student union; he was wondering if I wanted to grab dinner at the student union. I told him come on over and I'll be back right after I take a post-gym shower; then I persuaded him to actually attend the radio station interest meeting he had been thinking about, and after that he found me in the theater right before the movie started (I was going to enjoy Robert Downey Jr. on my own time, thanks) and said, "I'm going to the next meeting." Hook line and sinker, thank you.
I'm happy that I have my friend back.
"We should use Google Docs to schedule our social lives. It'd make everything so much easier."
"No, no: Google Calendar. It automatically updates."
Your nerd is showing, sir, and it's adorable.

CAD

Apparently, in Bluetooth's world, this does not stand for "computer-aided drafting" and is not code for "I'm trying to let you down easily by making it seem like I have too much homework to be social tonight even though it's Friday." Apparently, I know too many engineers.

Oops. But I asked, and NOW I KNOW. HA.

Further bulletins as events warrent.

Univited.

Apparently I'm like crack to Bluetooth and as such would interfere with Suitemate's appointed job of figuring out how he likes Clingy at the free movie Saturday night. Suitemate said it, not him.
Let me explain:

Once upon a time, a girl I'll call Clingy wanted to know what a boy I'll call Bluetooth thought of her. There had been vague talk between the two of them about starting along the path of young love, but he became distant and inconsistent in his enthusiasm (here measured by instances of contact and hanging out in the traditional, non-euphamistic original meaning). She then called upon her young loyalist known here as Suitemate to gather a group together for an outing, including Bluetooth without telling him Clingy would be going. It worked. He agreed.

They're going to the Saturday night movie and Suitemate's suppose to figure out how Bluetooth feels based on how he acts for two hours in the dark in the same group as Clingy.
I have been uninvited.

Several things (just let me put aside the instinct that I have been played, too, so I can at least pretend to be objective):

• This is a bad idea.
• Who thought this was a good way to figure anything out besides the exact amount of awkward those stupid little theater seats can hold for two hours?
• Seriously. Suitemate told me to not come because I distract Bluetooth. I am clinging to my objectivity as hard as possible when I say that maybe the fact that another girl distracts him is a sign that he is not entirely interested in the first girl. 
• Nobody knows what Bluetooth is thinking. Bluetooth doesn't know what Bluetooth is thinking. Don't try to interpret because it will be wrong. It's not a boy thing; it's a human thing. 

*hands over objectivity*

• I wonder if Bluetooth thinks I'm going. I wonder if that's the reason he's going. It's not like he's telling me anything anymore, either.
• You know what's depressed me the most over the past 10 days or so? Feeling like my friend (Mike) and my sex (Bluetooth) have both been yanked away from me just when I started getting the most comfort from them. I want them back, goddammit. 
• I was almost over the sex part, too, until Suitemate told me all about this plan.
• This is a really, really bad idea.

I'm going to the student movie fest on they're having on Friday. Suitemate (and, presumably, Mike et al) doesn't want to go. There's a chance Bluetooth will be there. He might've made one of the student movies. (See last sentence of first non-objective bullet point.) 
Of course I care. I wish I didn't but I do. But he'll be there or he won't be there and I'll get laid or get over it either way. Right now it's making my head hurt and my soul itch really badly.
I'm hanging out with Katie Saturday. Dear fuck I need a drink and a place to bury my cell phone and sit on my hands for the next week.
 

Wanker.

Bluetooth sent me this text message at 11:30 this morning, while I was buried in practicum learning something useful about condensing news stories for SMS:

Thanks for the offer. :-) I "handled" it myself.

Take it away, Rage.

DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING for TWENTY HOURS while I'm DEPRESSED and LONELY and WONDERING WHEN THE FUCK I'LL EVER GET TO CUDDLE ON A CHEST AGAIN OH GOD WHY--ahem. *mops up face* AND THEN TELL ME HOW GREAT MISS PALM AND HER FIVE SISTERS TREATED YOU.
Also, GET A BETTER PUN FOR MASTURBATION. YOU LACK ORIGINALITY.

To be fair, he did say he was trying to get work done at the same time. You did what you could without being a clingy hussy about it.

Mike's roommate once asked if I ever get Joan Cusack. I get her "You fucking asshole!" deleted scene in High Fidelity, yes.

"It takes a dirty mind to run a clean paper."

A note on fuck buddy manners.

My RAGE: LET ME OUT!

My rationality: Oh, come on. Are you seriously this bad at handling boredom?

RAGE: AND MIND FUCKERY. DON'T FORGET THE MIND FUCKERY.

Rationality: Okay. And the mind fuckery. But still. It's not that big of a deal, you don't want to be in a relationship, and who cares if--

RAGE: DON'T RESPOND TO A PSEUDO-CASUAL TEXT FROM ME BY SAYING YOU'RE HORNY AS HELL AND THEN NOT RESPOND AFTER I SAY LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT HELP WITH THAT.

Rationality: ...You know, I think you're right.

RAGE: DAMN RIGHT I AM!

Rationality: He's not really worth your bad blood pressure, but--

RAGE: CAN I?

Rationality: Fine. Go.

RAGE: RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!!
*explodes*

Rationality: We need to make more friends.

I want my mother.

Oh, Suitemate. I take it back. You're as confused as I am about almost exactly the same people.
I want my mother, too.

My dog wants to help.

Here's what we discovered after talking about Suitemate's confusing date with Mike during which he gave no signs or explicit outward expressions about how he feels about her:

• Guys don't know what to do with us and we don't know what to do with them.
• ...Yeah. That's it. 
• Fuck no I didn't tell her how involved I am or was with Bluetooth. Our thesis stands alone plenty well fine thank you without additional evidence and judgey judgment judging my sexual morals around here. 
• But seriously, I understand, Suitemate.
• NO, RANDOM PERSON I SORT OF KNOW IN THE COMPUTER LAB, I DON'T WANT TO EXPLAIN WHY I BROKE UP WITH MY BOYFRIEND.

My decoder ring's in the shop.

"Please don't call and embarrass me this time. Please?" Oh God. I HAVE become that aunt.

They're down there again.
Mike and Suitemate have once again commandeered the dorm common room for an entire afternoon/evening of movies on his laptop and the dorm couch. They're going to end it with a field trip to an actual movie theater to go see True Grit. I have not been invited.
*runs to check cell phone*
No. Nothing.
I understand. I do. Suitemate is in love with Mike. Mike is sort of aware of this. He wants to figure out how he feels about her. That can't happen if I'm sitting there making vulgar jokes between them (but what other jokes are there to make?).
It still hurts my feelings in an automatic sort of way that I would pay a lot less attention to if my Katie wasn't sick and my Bluetooth would text me about anything besides the frozen cherry cheesecake he was going to dethaw last night.
That's the only communication he's sent me for a week. I hoped it would morph into "hey let's have sexytime" from him. It hasn't. It won't, and I'm not going to beg. But silence kills me so very fucking slowly, bleeds me out over 12 hours. I won't fully give up until I go to sleep tonight.

This is why I don't want a relationship. Even just arranging for sex and watching other people try to start dating is making me angsty.

And, Fellow J-school Practicum Seniors, I like you guys and I want to stay a chum-tastic group and everything but I don't want to think about our work on Saturday. Can we joke about it on a Monday through Friday basis, with the possibility of getting drunk together after five days of shared torture?

Current voices in my head: Nora Ephron and Carrie Fisher. I've been reading their essays and memoir, respectively.

Robots (Live).

I couldn't do it.
The robotics team met in the machine shop tonight, aka the first night they've probably started anything visually interesting. I grabbed my camera and safety glasses and stood on the street corner and stared into the universe until I finally convinced myself to at least walk over there and then I saw the lights on and BF's car and one of the student's mom through the glass door sitting reading her paperback as usual and I couldn't do it.
I couldn't walk in there when he hasn't talked to me since Election Day and I couldn't walk into His Place on a boring Wednesday night any more than I could walk into it with a slick layer of Bluetooth sex clinging to my last night's clothes.
The robots are his. They've always been his, and I couldn't do it.

Hell with my other weekend plans.

I loved your class, Dr. T.

This entry is also called YOU People Figure It Out; I've Got Editors to Deal With. With Which to Deal. Whatever. I Don't Care Who Goes to the Free Movie.

On a sidenote...you know, I really don't have it in me right now.
I want ice cream. In celebration of tangible proof that my diaphragm works. Gross? No. Life-affirming. And across the street, so I will need a jacket.

"It's like we're spelunking instead of reporting." I helped Procrastination Guy file his bio copy correctly in Word today. It's probably the most competant I'll feel all semester.